Governing Board

John Balkcom

(Vice-Chair)

Balkcom has been a longtime adviser to management and boards. He retired in 2000 after 25 years as a management consultant and since then has served as a corporate director and advisory board member for a number of public and private enterprises. He served on the Bulletin’s Governing Board from 2012 - 2013 and from 2016 - present; previous leadership roles have included president of St. John’s College and chairman of a NYSE company. He has also served as a member of the advisory board of the Federation of American Scientists since 2014 and board observer and investor in Microbiome Therapeutics since 2012.

Marjorie Craig Benton

Benton served on the Bulletin’s board from November 2005 through March 2010. She has been a U.S. Commissioner, International Year of the Child, U.S. Ambassador to U.N.I.C.E.F., Board Chair of Save the Children Federation, White House Fellows Commission, and the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. She has served as a Trustee of the Bernard van Leer Foundation and the Van Leer Group Foundation in Holland. She is the Co-Founder of the Chicago Foundation for Women. She served as Board Chair of the Council on Foundations. She was the Public Delegate to the United Nations, a Delegate to the Special Session on Disarmament, a Co-Chair of Americans for SALT, and Special Advisor to the United Nations Disarmament Commission. She was also Co-Founder of the Peace Museum in Chicago, Illinois. The Bulletin honored Marjorie at its 2015 annual dinner, in recognition of her sustained commitment to the Bulletin, and determination in advancing its mission.

Edmund G. Brown Jr.

(Executive Chair)

Brown is currently serving in his fourth term as Governor of the State of California. He began his career in public service in 1969 as a trustee for the LA Community College District. He became California Secretary of State in 1970 and Governor of California in 1974 and 1978. After his governorship, Brown lectured and traveled widely, practiced law, served as chairman of the state Democratic Party, and ran for president. Brown was elected Mayor of Oakland in 1988 and California Attorney General in 2006; he was elected to a third gubernatorial term in 2010 and a fourth term in 2014. Since his return to the Governor's Office, Brown helped eliminate the state's multi-billion budget deficit, spearheading successful campaigns to provide new funding for California's schools and establish a robust Rainy Day Fund to prepare for the next economic downturn. His administration has established nation-leading targets to protect the environment and fight climate change. Brown attended the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a JD at Yale Law School.

Kerwin Charles

Charles is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor and former interim Dean at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He holds a master’s degree and a doctorate from Cornell University, and joined the University of Chicago in 2005 after teaching economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. In addition to his appointment at the University of Chicago, he is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the Board of Trustees for the non-partisan and objective research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.

Steven Fadem

Fadem is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Steven Fadem & Associates, bringing experience building start-ups, executing turnarounds and helping grow established companies through multiple stages of their evolution. The firm helps effect transformative change with experience in management, operations, marketing, technology and law. He is a founder of Global Data Sentinel, a cybersecurity firm. Previously, Fadem ran several private equity-backed companies in the media, energy, and financial services areas; the business side of a top-five AmLaw firm, Kirkland & Ellis; and a major financial services firm, Geller & Co. which, among other things, possesses a major multifamily office servicing the ultra-high net worth community and is the outsourced CFO for Bloomberg L.P.

Lee Francis

(Chair)

An internist and the CEO of Erie Family Health Center, Francis is assistant clinical professor of internal medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He is a past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), a national organization dedicated to the prevention of violence and nuclear war, and continues to serve on its Board of Directors.

Sonny Garg

Garg is currently leading the move into the energy industry for Uptake, a data analytics startup. Prior to Uptake, Garg spent 13 years at Exelon Corporation, the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the United State, in a variety of senior executive positions, including serving as a member of the Executive Committee. Most recently, he was Chief Information and Innovation Officer, where he developed and executed a strategy for Exelon’s IT department designed to rapidly adapt to the changes in technology and the energy industry. Garg began his career in the public and non-profit sectors, serving as an Assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, and was appointed a White House Fellow by President Clinton. He is a Henry Crown Leadership Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and serves on the boards of Project&, Chapin Hall Center for Children, and Social Venture Partners.

Austin Hirsch

(Secretary & Treasurer)

Hirsch is a partner at Reed Smith. His practice encompasses all aspects of business law, including mergers and acquisitions with both financial and strategic parties, corporate and real estate finance, venture capital transactions, partnership and joint ventures, and international transactions, with special expertise in counseling significant privately owned companies.

Steve Ramsey

Ramsey is the former Vice President of Corporate Environmental Programs at General Electric, where he managed GE’s environmental strategy. He was previously the head of environmental practice at Sidley Austin in DC and was the first Chief of Environmental Enforcement Section at the US Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. Ramsey has served as a Visiting Fellow at the Yale School of Forestry and Environment, the Chair of the Board of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, and as a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Texas School of Law.

Mark Ratner

Ratner is a materials chemist, whose work focuses on the interplay between molecular structure and molecular properties. This includes such aspects as molecular electronics, molecular optoelectronics, molecular systems design and biomolecular behavior, as well as quantum and classical methodologies for understanding and predicting molecular structure and responses. The major focus of his research for the last three decades has been the understanding of charge transfer and charge transport processes based on molecular structures, ranging from nonadiabatic intramolecular behavior to aspects of molecular devices, including photovoltaics, conductive polymers, molecular transport junctions and molecular switches.

William Revelle

(Vice-Chair)

Revelle joined the Bulletin’s Governing Board in 2007, served as chair from 2009 to 2012, and is currently its vice-chair. A quantitative psychologist, he has served as chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, president of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology, and a board member of the Federation of American Scientists.

Lowell Sachnoff

Sachnoff is a founding partner of Sachnoff & Weaver, Ltd., that merged with world-wide Reed Smith LLP where he serves as “Senior Counsel.” Sachnoff has specialized in trial and appellate work, and has served as Visiting Lecturer on trial and litigation matters at the University of Chicago, Northwestern and Chicago Kent Law Schools. In 1969, he was a founder of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and he continues to serve on the board of the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Sachnoff’s dedication to civil rights and social justice has earned him numerous awards, including the recent “American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award.” At present, Sachnoff and lawyers in his firm represent several prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. He has served on the board of the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control.

Gloria Scoby

Scoby retired as group publisher of Crain Communications in December, 2013. She joined Crain in 1978 to launch Crain's Chicago Business; then on to New York, where after a stint as Publisher of Crain's New York Business, she returned to Chicago as publisher of the Chicago paper in 1989. Scoby went on to become Group Publisher for Crain Communications, overseeing offices and financial, general business news and marketing newspapers in Chicago, New York, California, Mexico, and England. She launched Crain's first website in 1994 (the first business site in America), after which she led the expansion of websites and e-products as well as other sources of non-traditional revenue throughout the company. She has served on numerous civic, artistic, and charitable boards and is currently a member and past board member of the Commercial Club, the Economic Club of Chicago, the Executives Club, the Chicago Network, and trustee emeritus of Steppenwolf Theatre, where she served as chair. Scoby has received numerous leadership and professional awards, most recently a life time achievement award from the international ALLIANCE of business publications. She currently serves on the board as a member of the executive committee for TERRA (The Terra Foundation for American Art) and on the board of MAC (Museum Associates Council) at the Palm Springs Art Museum, a major fundraising arm of the museum.

Lew Watts

Watts has more than 35 years of experience within the global energy industry and has lived and worked on four continents. He retired in early 2009 after serving as CEO of PFC Energy, a global energy consultancy, and chaired an external expert panel of the World Bank focused on climate change and energy security in the same year. He currently serves on a number of technology-and-energy-related boards and is a published poet and novelist.